UFC vs Pride

[MikeWaters]

According to my friend:

1) He estimated the payout to Liddell as around 500,000. By comparison, the estimate for Delahoya in his next fight is 20 million. With a total purse of about 35 million.
2) boxing is an international sport. UFC is a national sport.
3) UFC organizers are getting rich. The fighters are not.
4) UFC has heavier weight classes than Boxing and Wrestling. Why? To exclude Asians and Mexicans
5) Liddell would beat Hopkins in MMA fight. Hopkins would beat Liddell in a street fight. Liddell would not even be an average boxer. Liddell has heavy hands, but poor form, and would be destroyed in the boxing ring.
6) It is much easier to learn effective grappling/sprawling than it is to learn boxing/punching

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

According to my friend:

1) He estimated the payout to Liddell as around 500,000. By comparison, the estimate for Delahoya in his next fight is 20 million. With a total purse of about 35 million.
2) boxing is an international sport. UFC is a national sport.
3) UFC organizers are getting rich. The fighters are not.
4) UFC has heavier weight classes than Boxing and Wrestling. Why? To exclude Asians and Mexicans
5) Liddell would beat Hopkins in MMA fight. Hopkins would beat Liddell in a street fight. Liddell would not even be an average boxer. Liddell has heavy hands, but poor form, and would be destroyed in the boxing ring.
6) It is much easier to learn effective grappling/sprawling than it is to learn boxing/punching

I disagree with your views of a racist UFC. I also disagree that Hopkins would win in a street fight. A boxing match maybe. But a stand up street fight without boxing sanctions and rules and my money is still on Liddell. Hopkins is giving up 45 pounds or so to Liddell. That is huge and can't be discounted. And finally, I completely disagree with your 6th point. To be able to counter all the different submissions while avoiding having your head taken off by punches, elbows, kicks, knees, etc is much more difficult than just keeping your gloves up and chin tucked in and stepping side to side.

[MikeWaters]

I think you lose credibility when you say that "maybe" Liddell would lose a boxing match to Hopkins, one of the best pound-for-pound boxers in history.

You are basically saying that someone who has never boxed could possibly beat one of the best boxers in history!

My friend would argue that submission holds don't really occur in street fighting. If your leg or arm is being bit, you are going to try to get up and away very quickly.

Wild haymakers are not the way to take a guy down. And that's what I see from these UFC fighters (what little I have seen).

I wonder if Liddell could survive the first combination from a truly great boxer.

[cougjunkie]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I think you lose credibility when you say that "maybe" Liddell would lose a boxing match to Hopkins, one of the best pound-for-pound boxers in history.

You are basically saying that someone who has never boxed could possibly beat one of the best boxers in history!

My friend would argue that submission holds don't really occur in street fighting. If your leg or arm is being bit, you are going to try to get up and away very quickly.

Wild haymakers are not the way to take a guy down. And that's what I see from these UFC fighters (what little I have seen).

I wonder if Liddell could survive the first combination from a truly great boxer.

THis debate will go on forever, until someone ponies up the dough to have them actually fight i would love to see a Roy Jones vs Liddell fight they are both the same age, they both at one time were the best pound for pound in their sport. But mix the boxing and MMA rules

Maybe no grappling, but you can use knees, punch, and kick. Something like that.

The bottom line is this if you talk to a boxer, they will say they are the toughest, wrestlers think they are the toughest, jiu jiutsu guys same thing, and so on and so forth. The debate will never end.

[SteelBlue]

You need to quit listening to your friend. He's ridiculously biased towards boxing. Anytime someone says "it's much easier to..." about a sport in which they do not participate it's a giant red flag. Maybe your friend is also a wrestler, but it sure doesn't sound like it to me. That's the first time in my life I've heard wrestling described as "much easier" to learn than boxing. I don't imagine that either sport is very easy to master.

His comments about racism are ridiculous in my opinion.

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I think you lose credibility when you say that "maybe" Liddell would lose a boxing match to Hopkins, one of the best pound-for-pound boxers in history.

You are basically saying that someone who has never boxed could possibly beat one of the best boxers in history!

My friend would argue that submission holds don't really occur in street fighting. If your leg or arm is being bit, you are going to try to get up and away very quickly.

Wild haymakers are not the way to take a guy down. And that's what I see from these UFC fighters (what little I have seen).

I wonder if Liddell could survive the first combination from a truly great boxer.

Maybe, because anything can happen. The best can go down from one lucky shot, from one injury, from anything. In a street fight anything can happen and that's why I said maybe.

Gloves off and Hopkins gives up 40 plus pounds in the street and you're still taking Hopkins? Outside of a square ring, Hopkins wouldn't know what to do.

You're probably right though about most street fights not ending in submission. But the fact that you have to defend against that is just one more thing to worry about than a fist. I have been in two fights in my life and one ended with a rear naked choke after I was doing my best Tito Ortiz ground and pound impression before the kid was able to roll onto his stomach and gave me his back.

[MikeWaters]

Whether UFC has white-leaning tendencies I don't know.

But I think it is safe to say:
1) percentage of whites in UFC much higher than percentage of whites among American boxers. Does this explain the appeal of the sport to white middle-class and rich America? Is this a ridiculous argument? I think not. I just googled "UFC racism" and saw that some people had commented "WHITE POWER" and such. So at the very least one would be hard pressed to argue that NONE of the appeal among ANY of the fans has to do with race. But to what degree, it's hard to say. You're saying it is not even worthy of discussion. Well, race is discussed in almost every other sport. It's hard to see why the UFC is suddenly the only sport that is immune.

2) about grappling vs. boxing in terms of learning. I think my friends says it is rare for a wrestler to become a good puncher, less rare for a puncher to learn grappling. I think he is speaking empirically here.

3) lower weight divisions in boxing are dominated by asians and latinos. Why doesn't the UFC have these divisions?

[MikeWaters]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/b...ome-columnists

When I was in Las Vegas recently, I spoke with Bob Arum, who brought the world boxing iconic figures such as Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Oscar de la Hoya.

"I don't think Ultimate Fighting has had an impact except that it has demonstrated to boxing promoters another method to promoting the product. They've done a marvelous job in promotion," he says. "But we have a totally different audience.

"The demographic of UFC are young white males. To cater to that audience, you basically only see white men who fight. Our audience for boxing is Hispanic, African-American and maybe a few whites."

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Whether UFC has white-leaning tendencies I don't know.

But I think it is safe to say:
1) percentage of whites in UFC much higher than percentage of whites among American boxers. Does this explain the appeal of the sport to white middle-class and rich America? Is this a ridiculous argument? I think not. I just googled "UFC racism" and saw that some people had commented "WHITE POWER" and such. So at the very least one would be hard pressed to argue that NONE of the appeal among ANY of the fans has to do with race. But to what degree, it's hard to say. You're saying it is not even worthy of discussion. Well, race is discussed in almost every other sport. It's hard to see why the UFC is suddenly the only sport that is immune.

2) about grappling vs. boxing in terms of learning. I think my friends says it is rare for a wrestler to become a good puncher, less rare for a puncher to learn grappling. I think he is speaking empirically here.

3) lower weight divisions in boxing are dominated by asians and latinos. Why doesn't the UFC have these divisions?

1) To what degree is the question. To deny that there are proponents of the UFC that are racist is foolhardy. But to make the jump from that to the UFC is racist isn't worthy of discussion.

2) Rulon Gardner won his MMA bout in Pride by standing up and punching. And it has been said by his trainers that he was the hardest puncher any of them had been hit by. I think anyone with enough dedication can become proficient in another style outside of the art they have mastered. But I would agree that it would be harder for a boxer to become a grappler than a grappler to become a boxer.

3) Tito Ortiz one of the faces of UFC is Mexican. He trots the Mexican flag into the ring with him with every fight. As far as lower weight classes, the marketability of those fights is the determining factor and not race. It's the same thing in boxing. And if it's about race then how can you discount the number of Brazillians, Japanese, etc that fight in MMA. Look at the card from the most recent UFC event and a good number of those are not white.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/b...ome-columnists

I have no idea if the promoters target those audiences or are aware of them, but there are Asians, Brazilians and others within the ranks. I have no idea why we don't have lower weight classes, but my guess is that UFC likes the "brawling" atmosphere, which one doesn't see in the lighter weight classes.